Watch the last-second Bruins goal that gave San Jose its first loss

BOSTON — Had the game ended 0.8 seconds earlier, the Sharks would still be the only NHL team without a regulation loss.

But that was enough time for one more shot Thursday night, and Boston Bruins forward David Krejci deflected it into the San Jose net to hand the Sharks a 2-1 defeat.

San Jose had territorial control for most of the game and outshot Boston 39-17, but coach Todd McLellan was not ready to let his 8-1-1 team off the hook with any sort of explanation that the puck sometimes takes strange bounces at bad times.

“It’s unacceptable that we can’t at least close that out,” McLellan said. “We have to be disappointed as a group. We can’t leave here saying the ‘hockey gods’ or ‘we could have or should have’ because ‘could have’ and ‘should have’ never won any games.”

Two of the NHL’s top career scorers set the stage for the dramatic finish as Jarome Iginla scored his first goal as a Bruin late in the second period and San Jose’s Patrick Marleau scored his team-leading eighth of the season early in the third.

As the clock ticked down and overtime seemed guaranteed, Boston captain Milan Lucic passed the puck to defenseman Adam McQuaid at the blue line. McQuaid sent it toward the net without a lot of zip on it. But Krejci skated into the slot with Sharks captain Joe Thornton trailing him and was able to get a stick on the puck.

“It’s one of those things I kind of got caught half way,” Thornton said, “but we played a good game.”

Sharks goalie Antti Niemi faulted himself on the play, saying he “should be more compact there with the puck,” adding he did get a good look at it coming off McQuaid’s stick before Krejci intervened.

“I thought I had it, but he tipped it kind of back the same way I was coming from,” the goalie said.

The loss may cost San Jose more than the two points. Already missing Brent Burns and three other injured forwards, the Sharks were without Tommy Wingels for two-thirds of the game after a questionable hit against the boards by 6-foot-9 Bruins defenseman Zdeno Chara.

McLellan was critical earlier in the day of some of the illegal hits occurring with seemingly greater frequency in the NHL. But he wasn’t ready to lump that one — or a later incident where Chara’s stick appeared to clip Tomas Hertl’s face — in with the others.

“Every time somebody is hit now we quickly run to the video and we analyze — was it legal, was it illegal?” McLellan said. “It’s a hard game, and it’s played by hard players that have to get involved physically night in and night out. If it’s dirty, it should be severely dealt with. If it’s hard hockey, then so be it.”

Even before Iginla’s goal at 18:48 of the second period on a shot he banked in off Niemi, Boston seemed to have the higher quality scoring chances despite being outshot.

Bruins forward Sean Thornton clanked one off a post when he got behind the San Jose defense at 2:55 of the second period, and Niemi robbed Patrice Bergeron at 17:09 with a glove save off one of the few odd-man rushes by either team.

Marleau’s goal came 18 seconds into the third period when he popped the rebound of a shot by Marc-Edouard Vlasic past Bruins goalie Tuukka Rask.

San Jose is now 1-1 on its five-game trip that continues Saturday night in Montreal.